Well, this past weekend was about as bad as it could get. Not to mention that I did what had to be the dumbest thing I have done in my entire life. Bad enough that live just south of where the Hurricane came ashore. I live in Ft. Myers and we took a pretty good hit, That should have been my clue to stay home. We lost power with in the first 10 minutes of the storm and had no idea that when I left for Daytona, I would be traveling the exact route of the storm!
Try driving around giant downed oak trees at 60 mph hour, not fun! I did the driving as the wife yelled out the obstacles in the roadway. Driving down the road, she would yell “tree” or “roof” heck even once she yelled out “mobile home!”. I can’t believe that we did not have a flat tire as we drove through all that craziness, but at 1am we made it to Daytona to get our ocean front room at the Adams Mark (Mistake number 2) The room was a mess, the floor had about a half inch of water on it (from the Storm) and the room was dirty! (just poorly kept), I wonder if they even bothered to clean it from the last folks staying in there or did they just make the bed and call it done. We had cigarette butts and dead cockroaches on the floor, Mold and inch deep in the door tracks and around the tub and my blanket had burn marks where someone had fallen asleep with a cigarette in their hand and set the blanket on fire! Really, I am not making this stuff up, I took pictures, it was gross! The next morning I went to the front desk to tell them about the room conditions and I was told by the front desk person, that “my concerns were deep cleaning issues that they would not be able to address”. So I checked out of the Hotel, it was too gross to stay at (even if the storm had not passed through) let alone pay $165.00 per night to sleep in a place that nasty!
So we tried to keep contact back home and by morning we still did not have any power and the phones were dead. The wife was worried about our children (18 and 13) that we left in the care of my sister (33). So we tried to find a place to eat breakfast, but most of the places were closed due to storm damage. So I told my wife that I would take a walk through the Expo and see if there was anything that I could not live without. I met Tom Burke and saw his great looking T+ Boas, and there was a fellow across from him that had his own T+ Albino Island form Boas that were also very beautiful, but appeared different in color from Tom’s. I also saw some super looking Suri Boas that I almost had to get, but the expense that I may be facing from the storm made me think twice and I left the Bluest Looking Striped Suri I had ever seen on the table (dang I should have gotten that snake! Worried about the House and the kids, and not getting into the Expo mood, the wife and I headed for home less then 20 hours after leaving from home. We stopped by the Daytona Sears and picked up a Generator (instead of that Blue Suri) after waiting in line for 4 hours and made it back home in Ft. Myers by 11pm on Saturday night. All in all the weekend was a mess of the worse kind, but the house was ok the Kids were fine and we had a generator that we lived off of for the next 3 days until we got power back up.
I hope some of you had a better weekend then I did and for those of you who did not or even those in Charlotte County that had it worse, I will say a small prayer for you.
Here is a Picture of me and my 13 year old daughter. During the Height of the Storm we went outside to yell at it and challenge it to bring it on!
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Jim Hopkins "Hoppy"
Hopkins Holesale Herps
Hopfam1@aol.com
